Spontaneously broken supergravity: Old and new facts

We report on some recent investigations of the structure of the four dimensional gauged supergravity Lagrangian which emerges from flux and Scherk‐Sc hwarz compactifications in higher dimensions. Special attention is given to the gauge structure of M‐theory compactified on a seven torus with 4‐form and geometrical (spin connection) fluxes t urned on. A class of vacua, with flat space‐time and described by “no‐scale” supergravity models, is analyzed.